


The Girl in the Photograph

by ashen_key



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Families of Choice, Family, Gen, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Post-Canon, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-28
Updated: 2012-08-28
Packaged: 2017-11-13 01:50:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/498111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashen_key/pseuds/ashen_key
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The author was a Tamara Sharonova, Natasha noted, and she opened the book and started flicking through the pages. </p><p>Then she frowned, turned the pages back to the dedication. </p><p><i>To my cousin, Nataliya Alianovna Romanova</i>, read the page, <i>wherever you are</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Girl in the Photograph

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anuna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anuna/gifts).



> Many thanks to [TLvop](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TLvop/pseuds/TLvop) for reading this over for me. ♥
> 
> Written for the [Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff Promptathon](http://be-compromised.livejournal.com/60569.html), for the prompt, 
> 
>  
> 
> _There she stood in the doorway,  
>  I heard the mission bell  
> And I was thinkin' to myself :  
> "This could be heaven and this could be hell"_

She picked up the book on a whim, but all things considered, it hadn't been a terribly _whimsical_ whim. The cover showed two young girls sitting on some grass in the sun, the older one blonde and maybe six or seven. The younger looked more like three, and she had a halo of red curls. Both were grinning. 

The title was ' _The Girl in the Photograph_ ', but it was the smaller subtitle that led to Natasha picking up the book from the non-fiction new releases section. She had been a girl in the system whom the system had vanished, as had her sisters, so the ' _and Mother Russia's Other Missing Children_ ' had caught her eye. 

The author was a Tamara Sharonova, Natasha noted, and she opened the book and started flicking through the pages. 

Then she frowned, turned the pages back to the dedication. 

_To my cousin, Nataliya Alianovna Romanova_ , read the page, _wherever you are_. 

– – 

“I bought a book today,” Nat said, and Clint paused with his fingers mid-keystroke. It wasn't an announcement she normally made (because honestly, she might as well announce that she breathed air), and there was a brittle edge to her too-calm voice. He turned in his chair and caught her hovering near the half-wall at the entrance hallway. She was frowning, slightly. That was never a good sign.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Translated from Russian,” she went on. “By the author. Journalist. Went looking for her long-lost missing cousin, couldn't find her, discovered all kinds of other missing children in the Soviet social system instead. Corruption, neglect, abuse, how terrible, et cetera.” As Natasha talked, she withdrew the book from her bag and walked into the living area. 

Not being frozen in the doorway with that fight-or-flight poise would have been considered a start if the tension had actually disappeared when she started moving. No such luck. 

“She dedicates her book to said tragically missing cousin. A Nataliya Alianovna Romanova.” 

“...Nat?”

Nat smiled, bright and a little fractured. “A Nataliya Alianovna Romanova who was orphaned in 1983, at the age of six, thanks to an apartment building fire. Her mother threw her from a second-story window. Her mother was apparently a chemist, which I didn't know, and her father played violin for the Volgograd Philharmonic Orchestra. Which I _did_ know. It's all in the book. Both father and daughter had red hair, and this is little Nataliya on the cover.” 

Clint took the book from her hands, but his attention remained on her. “Natasha,” he said, quietly.

She stared at him, eyes too full of emotion for any of them to actually be named. “I...I feel like chopping things. Mind if we have stir-fry for lunch instead of dinner? I, uh. Really need to chop things up.”

“...I don't mind,” he said, both because he _didn't_ mind, and because it seemed the safest thing to say – it was the only thing he could _think_ to say. 

“Good. I'll be back,” and with that, Nat turned and vanished back into the hallway to go to their bedroom. 

He stared after her, and then looked down at the cover at the two grinning little girls. He opened the book to look at the author's information, and stopped. The photograph was normal enough, a black and white one of a blonde woman with wavy hair, but she could have been Nat's biological sister. Right down to the smile. 

“Ah, hell,” Clint muttered, and reached for where his work-phone was charging. 

He had a background check to order.

– –

After she'd changed from heels and a pretty dress to ragged, comfy jeans and one of Clint's shirts, Natasha went into the bathroom. Her intention had been to splash water on her face and then move out into her kitchen; instead, she paused at her reflection. 

Tamara Ivanovna Sharonova had her nose. 

Tamara Ivanovna Sharonova had, in a lot of ways, her _face_. 

It could be hard to tell via photographs, Natasha reminded herself, and Tamara might not even be related to her. It could have been some other little red-haired girl tossed from a window at the right time, at the right place, at the right age, with the right name. It could have been. She traced out the lines of the mouth they shared anyway.

That mouth curled up a bit in sudden annoyance. 

“Just...fuck off,” she told her reflection - and by extension, her most-likely cousin - in Russian, and walked out to find her cutting boards and her beautiful kitchen knives. 

Clint raised his eyebrows at her in query and she shrugged, still itchy under her skin with emotions she had no inclination to name for the time being. Neither said a word, but she brushed his shoulder with her fingers as she walked past him into her kitchen. 

Their kitchen, given it was _their_ apartment, but the kitchen was really hers. She'd always liked kitchens, ever since she was a little girl. Kitchens were warm, kitchens were safe, and if she thought about kitchens she didn't have to think about possible relatives. Particularly, she didn't have to think about possible relatives _writing books_ with her name in them, because if anyone found a cached version of her public INTERPOL red notice from 2005...

Natasha pulled out ingredients and utensils, and shut the onion drawer with more force than was strictly necessary. Clint moved from the table to one of the barstools the other side of the kitchen counter, and he was being a wonderful man, because he wasn't saying anything. He was just being present, and that was all she needed for now. 

Well, Clint being his patient self, and a lot of things to slice and dice. 

It wasn't until after lunch, when they were both sitting on the couch and Natasha had her head resting against his shoulder, that she actually said anything beyond, 'and lunch is ready.' She knew he hadn't really minded the silence; the man seemed to enjoy semi-zoning out watching her hands at work. And he had lived through a fair number of her moods at this point. Just a few. But now she was ready to talk. 

“Did you call SHIELD, before?” Natasha asked him, tangling her fingers with his.

“Yeah, but just.... for background check on Tamara,” Clint said. “Thought I'd leave briefing them fully to you.”

“I appreciate that,” she said, and then huffed a tired laugh. “What the _fuck_ am I going to do?”

“...That, I, uh. Don't know.”

“Helpful,” but there was no heat in her voice. “I...don't have a reaction for this. Except for panic, but I'm desperately trying not to do that. Is that...normal? Trying not to panic?”

Clint shifted slightly, looked down to meet her gaze. “You're a spy with a record, Nat. And possibly a journalist for a cousin.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she agreed. “I think I'm entitled to be at least _very concerned._ ”

“I'd call Coulson. If it was me.”

A number of responses danced at the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed them. They were born of a desire to lash out due to her own turmoil, and he didn't deserve it. 

“Yeah. Sounds like a good plan,” Natasha said, and her voice was faint to her ears. She took a deep breath that was supposed to be steadying; she said, “Couldn't they have fucking cared when I _needed_ them to?” and started to cry. 

She hadn't read the part of the book which, presumably, would explain why her (apparent) uncle didn't come to Volgograd to claim her. She didn't know if it was bureaucracy or a family feud or a series of unfortunate accidents that led to her being in the orphanage long enough for the Red Room find her. She hadn't read it because she didn't want to start screaming on the bus, but now she wasn't sure that she _wanted_ to know. 

Her _family_ was mostly dead. Her _family_ was her parents – her musical papa, her fierce mama who threw her out of the second-story window so she would escape the flames. Her _family_ was her sisters, her beautiful sisters from the Red Room who all choose to escape together. She knew two were dead, one was missing. Gala, she knew how to get in touch with, if she thought it worth the security breach (her sister was a dance instructor in North Carolina in one of SHIELD's protection programs, and Natasha had long talked herself into thinking it safer if she never mentioned that she was alive.)

Her _family_ was Clint, and Coulson, and Kos, and Olson (also dead). Her family was her team, and Fury. Steve could be a younger brother of choice one day, maybe, because her _family_ was all of her own choosing.

The idea of people claiming to be family just because of DNA was...was...

She didn't even _remember_ that photograph being taken. 

Clint had wrapped his arms around her, and she clung to him, hiccuping and weeping partly in shock at her own emotions. Then again, family was important, and she never did take well to having her foundations rocked. 

“If we're not actually related,” Natasha muttered, once she was able, “think Fury would let me go and kill her? I'd feel better.”

“Nat,” Clint said, voice partly amused.

“At least I'm pretty sure that in all of her searching, she didn't find anything about the Red Room.”

“Or she was smart enough not to publish,” he pointed out, and she shrugged a little.

“If they thought some journalist had found _anything_ , they wouldn't wait until she published. They'd just kill her,” Natasha said, and then she shut her eyes. “Okay. I'm going to go and call SHIELD, let 'em know about possible security issues, and then...Hell with today. I'm having a nap. Join me?”

“'Will do,” he said, and kissed her forehead. “Let me know when you're off the phone.”

“Yeah,” she said, and unwound herself from the couch. She got to her feet, and then turned, pointed at him. “And _you_ are making me waffles for dinner.” 

Clint smiled at her slowly. “As you wish.” 

She snorted with amusement, and then started walking towards the study. She could handle this. It was just a book, and only her father's name was uncommon. It was just a book, and maybe it didn't anything.

Maybe it did.

Despite herself, she found that she was placing every foot down precisely, as if the floorboards might change underneath her. Irritation flared, but as her feet hit the rug underneath her desk, the emotion changed. 

She wanted to go back, ask Clint what _he_ would do if relatives came out from nowhere to exist and rock the world he'd so painstakingly created. She would ask, she thought, but not now. Now would be procrastination, because as soon as she called Coulson, it wouldn't just be a book and a feeling; it'd be a theory on record. 

Even if the girl in the photograph wasn't _her_ , her reaction and the possibility would be on record. 

“Well, Toma,” she said, her Russian deliberately with the Volga-region accent of her childhood, “if we _are_ related...”

She didn't know.

Natasha shook her head, shifted mental languages, and picked up her phone. “Coulson? Yeah, it's Romanoff. I've got a situation...”

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies for the somewhat unresolved ending - there will be a sequel, as soon as I work out what Natasha will decide to do.


End file.
